Contact: Samuel Hughes
STARKVILLE, Miss.—In an early push for an exchange of ideas within autonomous agriculture, Mississippi State University’s new Agricultural Autonomy Institute recently hosted a two-week international exchange with six students from the United Kingdom’s Harper Adams University, and MSU students will return the visit this June.
At their home university, the fifth-year HAU master’s students are involved in various agricultural engineering projects within the university’s engineering department, home to the Hands Free Hectare Project, focused on improving the viability of autonomous agriculture systems. In 2017, the project completed a crop harvest without any direct human intervention.
Madison Dixon, associate director of MSU’s Agricultural Autonomy Institute, said HAU students will be integrated into ongoing projects at AAI and will push research forward by providing their perspective from the Hands Free Hectare Project.
“We want to emulate and hopefully improve and expand upon the Hands Free Hectare concept at Harper Adams University here at the MSU Agricultural Autonomy Institute on our own Autonomous Acres Proving Ground at the Mississippi Agricultural and Forestry Experiment Station’s R.R. Foil Plant Science Research Center,” Dixon said.
The university in Newport, England, is a specialist institution for the study of agriculture and is at the forefront of research related to food sustainability, agricultural engineering and environmental studies in Europe. Kit Franklin, senior engagement fellow at HAU Engineering and lead researcher of Hands Free Hectare, visited MSU last fall.
“Having visited MSU to share some of my experiences of agriculture autonomy projects at the launch of the AAI last fall, I saw many possible synergies with Harper Adams Engineering and MSU,” Franklin said. “After some initial conversations about academic interaction during that visit, it was great to have this initial exchange arranged so quickly."
Kelly Billington, an HAU mechanical engineering student, is supporting Assistant Professor Xin Zhang’s research with the Clearpath Robotics Husky vehicle. The goal is to attach an automated arm to the Husky vehicle. From there, the connected end-effector—a recent MSU-developed picking device—would create a small, autonomous robotic harvesting solution for cotton and other crops.
“Everyone’s mind works differently, and when you’ve been brought up in a completely different environment to another, you can come up with unique solutions with your own perspective,” Billington said. “If you share those ideas and work on them together, you can really make something quite interesting. In terms of agriculture, you’re not looking at it from just one worldview—you're looking at it as a worldwide application.”
Students also focused on improving AAI’s autonomous New Holland TC33 tractor, which includes an onboard computer that serves as the central “brain,” accessing data from the GPS and cameras and regulating the electric motors that control the tractor. AAI is focused on optimizing the tractor’s autonomous technology to make it a fully operational hands-free vehicle.
Visiting HAU students Dom Neal, a mechanical engineering student; and Charlie Jackson and Rhodri Williams, both agricultural engineering students, have worked as a team to optimize the camera system for the TC33 tractor so that it can effectively navigate fields without human intervention.
“In the UK, we really only work with one- to two-foot crops but here they might work with corn or something a lot taller,” Williams said. “As an engineer, you might design something for one farm but find it’s not suited to another farm. The more experience you get in seeing different applications and different experiences, it makes you all the better.”
The work will continue through online correspondence, and this initial exchange could establish collaboration between MSU and HAU for years to come.
AAI Director Alex Thomasson said that having recently launched last fall, AAI recognizes the global importance of autonomous agriculture and is promoting the early exchange of student expertise.
“The new institute is working to foster international collaboration and innovation in agricultural autonomy as well as international exposure, academic networking and goodwill,” Thomasson said.
AAI will continue to cultivate relationships with established and emerging researchers in agricultural autonomy to sponsor further research and development in Mississippi. Find out more about AAI at www.aai.msstate.edu.
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